For a large group of persons intermittent catheterisation is a daily-life procedure, taking place several times a day. Typically catheters for intermittent catheterisation are used by patients suffering from urinary incontinence or by disabled individuals like para- or tetraplegics who may have no control permitting voluntary urination and for whom catheterisation may be the way of urinating. Using an intermittent catheter, the bladder may be drained through a natural or artificial urinary canal.
The availability of catheter assemblies, which are compact and discrete to carry along and dispose via the garbage collection in addition to being easy to use, even for individuals with reduced dexterity, significantly improves quality of life for a large group of individuals. Among such compact catheters can Compact Female be mentioned, which is produced by Coloplast A/S.
WO 03/002179 discloses a urinary catheter device which is adapted for a configuration wherein the length of the catheter is reduced relative to the length of the catheter in a configuration suitable for insertion of the catheter in the urethra. Thus the catheter may be stored and carried along in a compact and discrete configuration.
In some situations a user may wish to use a catheter with a urine bag connected to it, e.g. when a patient in a wheel chair is unable to move from the wheelchair to the toilet. Urine bags are typically made from sheets of a foil material joined along the edges. The thickness of the urine bag is thus very small, but due to the plane dimensions of the urine bag, it is not a discrete unit to carry along.